A Dynamics AX 2009 Upgrade Gives One Customer a Chance to Drop Old Customizations

If you're thinking about grading to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, it always helps to hear from someone who's already been through it.

Earlier this week, one Dynamics AX customer shared his experiences upgrading to the latest version of the software during a webinar hosted by the AX User Group (AXUG).

The customer, a major industrial manufacturer in the U.S., is currently running AX 2009 out of a single data center for 2,000 users-about 525 concurrent users every day, scattered around the country.

The company, which is made up of a number of different business, purchased AX in 2000 and went live in 2001. Since then it's been through a variety of upgrades. In fact, during the initial implementation the company upgraded from version 2.1 to 2.5.

"We really purchased AX to get on the upgrade bandwagon," the customer said. "We wanted to do it every few years. When the new version came out we spent about one and half years with the first implementation.  Version 3.0 came out just about a month after we got done, but we weren't ready to take on an upgrade then."

However, as part of Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program (TAP), the company did move to version 4.0 with a clean installation when it was released which is designed to provide a consistent experience for customers partnering with Microsoft to get real world customer feedback on Microsoft pre-release products.

"First we learned all the new features [of 4.0] and then we re-added the customization that we wanted," he said. "But when we went to AX 2009, we took the other approach and did a real upgrade. So we went through the process of merging the code and things went pretty well."

Which approach is best ...